6-10-2024 LAKETOWN, UTAH

 Right out of the gate, it rained on us, the windshield is full of squashed bugs and our vehicles are filthy!

 

Our first leg was a long, 340-mile drive and the first night was just a stopover.  We don’t usually do that but the goal was a longer stay at our next spot, Laketown, UT, where we hope to get in a little paddleboarding.  We are currently driving and ahead of us on the horizon is an endless ridge of snowcaps.  Beautiful to be sure but I suspect a little on the chilly side.  I frequently think about the Mormons who came out here, walking from Chicago or Baltimore pulling handcarts.  When they saw this mountain range, they thought, “Yeah, this is probably a good enough place, let’s stop here.”  The women, in their full-length dresses, petticoats, bloomers, bonnets, six kids in tow, an infant in arms and pregnant with another one, might have also had a voice.  So they called it quits.  Ol’ Brig named the area, “Deseret,” and chose the beehive as its emblem.  Not because Utah is infested with bees but to symbolize the perseverance and industriousness that bees typify and that the faithful would have to emulate in order to survive and thrive here.  Thus, Utah is The Beehive State.  (Handy info for your next game of Trivia.)

 

We are now just north of Laketown, at Bear Lake’s Rendezvous Beach.  This is an amazing lake.  It’s huge;  20 miles long, 8 miles wide, 208 feet deep at its deepest point.  It is called “The Caribbean of the Rockies,” because of the intensely turquoise to navy blue water, certainly not its average temperature (54F)!  The Idaho-Utah state line runs across the approximate center of the lake.  On the south end where we are camped the beach has a sandbar about 10-15 feet out.  The water is fairly shallow quite a distance from shore and so the water temperature is warm enough for me to venture out on my board.  Maybe.  Being cold is not my strong suit.  Today, we had to go in to town for a few things (more on that) and so we decided that while we were at it, we would take a drive around the lake just to see the haps.  They include beautiful beaches and picnic areas, campgrounds and hundreds of gorgeous houses, estates really.  It is probable that they are seasonally occupied as we learned that, here at 6,000 feet above sea level, the lake freezes over in the Winter.  (One local told us that last year, at one point, he had 5 feet of snow in his driveway.  Isn’t that special?)  It took about 2 hours to drive around the beautiful blue lake, much larger than it was originally because of a small dam that was constructed downstream.  It is a water sports and fisherman’s paradise.  Seasonal, to be sure.

The view from our campsite

Driving around the lake, beauty all the way.

 

When we arrived here, we found that the Brinks locks installed on the Jeepster’s tow forks had seized up due, no doubt, to road grit, rain splatter and grime.  No amount of lubricant spray or force would allow the keys to open them.  We were stuck with the Jeep attached to the beast.  We figured out how to detach the forks from the Jeep and got it free but with the locks still locked, there was no way to rehook the Jeep for the next tow.  The locks had to be cut off.  With what?  So we were off to the Ace Hardware Store in Garden City to try to find anything that might work.  What would cut through the high-strength steel of a Brinks lock, we wondered?  Rob found a high-speed Dremel and disc.  So our third day on this adventure involved resolving another, “issue.”  It worked and took about 15 minutes, to our relief.  Now, we’ll tow with simple pins.  If somebody wants to steal the Jeep while we’re at lunch, they’ll have one less hoop through which to jump.

Rob tries out the new Dremel to 
cut off the locks.  Yup, works
as advertised.

 

Back to having fun.  The cocktail hour is upon us.

 We are off to the beach to enjoy a toonie in the late afternoon sun.